North Carolina came late into the history of American fiction. Until the middle of the 19th century, few novelists had used the state for background or character, and often life as it actually existed in North Carolina was not taken into account. But in 1850 several novels appeared in which North Carolina received its first contemporary fictional treatment by one who knew of and had been a part of life in the state--Gregory Seaworthy, aka George Higby Throop.

On an archaeological excavation at the fort site on Roanoke Island, three metal disks were found. These casting-counters were part of the equipment used in medieval Europe for manual reckoning--the forerunner of the modern adding machine.

Stephen Chaulker Bartlett was the acting surgeon onboard the U.S.S. LENAPPE. Letters written by Bartlett from the LENAPEE, one of the principal vessel in the attack on Wilmington, January-February 1865, give a glimpse of the ordinary living conditions in the lower Cape Fear in 1865, contraband, refugees, and a new era in North Carolina and US history.

After Reconstruction, the movement of African-Americans out of southern states like North Carolina were the result of political and socio-economic pressures. Restrictions on civil rights, lack of wages, the operation of land tenure and the credit system, brought discontent that pushed for a mass migration out of North Carolina.